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During the Middle Ages, a thriving center for learning and research was Muslim Spain, where students gathered to consult Arabic manuscripts of earlier scientific works and study with famous teachers. One of these teachers was Sa'id al-Andalusi, who in 1068 wrote Kitab Tabaqat al-'Umam, or "Book of the Categories of Nations," which recorded the contributions to science of all known nations. Today, it is one of few surviving medieval Spanish Muslim texts, and this is its first English translation.

Science ('ulum), as used by Sa'id and other scholars of that period, is a broad term covering virtually all aspects of human knowledge. After initial discussions of the categories of nations that did or did not cultivate science, Sa'id details the specific contribution of nine nations or peoples-India, Persia, Chaldea, Greece, Rome, Egypt, the Arab Orient, al-Andalus, and the Hebrews. He includes the names of many individual scientists and scholars and describes their various contributions to knowledge, making his book a significant work of reference as well as history.

Explore the dynamic relationship between nature and creativity in this lively look at how the natural world shaped art in the Middle Ages.

What did it take to make a work of art in the Middle Ages, and what did the environment have to do with it? A lot, it turns out. In Sourcing Nature, Heather Alexis Smith reveals how artists and laborers, who grew and gathered art-making materials, embraced challenges as resources shifted and climates changed. In some cases, scarcity spurred innovation in the conservation and use of local supplies and resulted in practices that have a surprising resonance with the present. An epilogue by artist and historian Jenny Price connects these concerns to our contemporary moment.

• Demonstrates that the environment actively influenced how, where, and even which types of art were made.
• Offers a fresh ecocritical perspective on art history, revealing nature as a collaborator.
• Uniquely organized into five chapters by ecosystem: water, forest, field, quarry and mine, and earth.
• Features over 100 full-color illustrations of iconic medieval artworks, including towering Gothic cathedrals, brilliantly illuminated manuscripts, gleaming reliquaries, and lustrous cloth.

Innovative and engaging, Sourcing Nature invites readers interested in art, history, and sustainability to see medieval art with fresh eyes—as a partnership and lively interchange between humans and nature.

In the Middles Ages, the edges of one's world could represent different meanings. On the one hand, they might have been situated in far-away regions, mainly in the east and north, that one most often only knew from hearsay and which were inhabited by strange beings: humans with their faces on their chest, without a mouth, or with dog heads. On the other hand, the edges of one's world could just mean the borders of the community where one lived and that one sometimes might not have had the possibility to cross during one's whole life.In this volume specialists from eight European countries offer their ideas about different edges of the medieval world and contribute to a discussion that has been increasing greatly in Medieval Studies in recent times.